Cryptographic Standards and Crypto-C
4 RSA BSAFE Crypto-C Developers Guide
Cryptographic Standards and Crypto-C

PKCS Standards and Crypto-C

Crypto-C is a general-purpose programming tool that developers can use to write a
wide variety of applications. Crypto-C was built to help developers implement the
Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS), a series of documents that specify a
standard way of performing basic cryptographic operations. Several higher-level
standards, such as S/MIME, SET, IPSec, and SSL, require implementation of various
PKCS standards. Since Crypto-C complies with PKCS standards, developers should
find it fairly easy to integrate Crypto-C into software that implements the PKCS
standards.
For copies of the PKCS documents, see the PKCS section of RSA Securitys Web site at
http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/pkcs, or contact our sales department for a
PKCS diskette.

NIST Standards and Crypto-C

Certain Crypto-C releases may be used to produce applications that are compliant
with the Federal Information Processing Standards. Compliance with the FIPS
standards is often required by government agencies and contractors. The National
Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) establishes the FIPS standards, and
certifies FIPS-compliant applications.
As changes are made in a new release, RSA Security may need to reapply for NIST
certification. If you need to verify whether or not a specific release is compliant with
FIPS, contact your sales representative.

NIST Approval and Windows 32-bit Platforms

If you require NIST approval for your Windows 32-bit applications, you may benefit
from using the FIPS-compliant Crypto-C algorithms listed following this paragraph.
NIST may approve the use of these algorithms in your application without requiring
further algorithm-level testing of your application, based on the algorithm certificates
issued to Crypto-C. For more information, see the algorithm compliance Web site
provided by NIST.
Crypto-C includes the following FIPS-compliant algorithms: